


Shadow Figures in the Dark

by andthekitchensink



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Don't copy to another site!, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 19:51:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20533643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthekitchensink/pseuds/andthekitchensink
Summary: Once upon a long time ago, in the 1930's, Connor used to work at Kamski’s Amazing Traveling Carnival. His favorite attraction was the silly Fun House with all the mirrors. After he died, his soul was trapped in the very mirrors he so loved.No one goes near the Fun House anymore. He feels lonely.And then one day…





	Shadow Figures in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @thiriumcupcakes for sparking the idea! :D Hope you like it!
> 
> Will tag properly tomorrow!
> 
> Actually, just gonna leave a warning here for some potentially squicky ghostly stuff. Gruesome old school fairytale gorey stuff. Not too graphic, but still. Just to be on the safe side.

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a traveling carnival, which at its heyday was one of the biggest and brightest fairgrounds you could imagine. Spend an hour there, and you could lose yourself in the marvels of the world: exotic animals and spectacular artistes from across the globe - jugglers, conjurers, acrobats and more still. The bearded lady was the most beautiful lady in the world, and the gentlemanly lion wasn’t a lion at all but a man with golden fur all over his body. There were clowns and hypnotists, and cabinets to delight and horrify, and tents that rose up so high in the air you could swear the flag at the top reached the moon.

As much life as passed through the gates, as many smiling faces that went by the ticket booth each year, it came to pass that misfortune and death be constant companions to the carnival troupe for years and years to come. No one knows how it began, other than with the death of the carnival’s most charismatic star.

Markus the Magnificent Mimic lost his life in the spring of 1921, to a misunderstanding that had him at the wrong end of a revolver. Shot dead, right between the very eyes that made him famous: one blue, one green, set in what was already an achingly beautiful face.

His death was tragedy enough, but when the man who owned the carnival did nothing to mark the death of his protegé, a foul mood settled over the travelling performers. He was an enigmatic man, by the name of Kamski, but though it was rumored that he had an all seeing eye not even he could foresee the tragedies yet to come. His oldest partner, Amanda Stern, who was in all ways a seer, told him he might as well have cast a curse over the place for how little he cared. If only she had known how right she was, that she could have countered that foul spell.

As if to prove her right, not long after came the death of Simon the Swallow, the soaring trapeze artist. His adoring fans thought he belonged on the silver screen, comparing him to the likes of Rudolf Valentino. Behind the curtains, however, he was of a quiet disposition, growing quieter yet after the death of his dearest friend. Not two weeks after his demise, Simon died in his sleep. It was only then it came to light that he and Markus wore matching hearts etched into their chests.

Some of the magic of the place was lost with the star crossed lovers, who could never speak freely in life for fear of incarceration or worse, though their hearts were compatible even in death. The circus lived on, but never quite recovered, though many stayed on, for they  _ were  _ a family, and families stick together - through sickness and health, life and death. Through love and tragedy.

Over the generations the carnival evolved, surviving where others did not. For a time, it travelled the land as a freak show rather than a circus, favoring contortionists, and beauties who breathed fire or swallowed swords, or broke out of great big tanks filled to the brim with water - submerged, shackled and bound: each and every one of them in their own right wonders of the world, surrounded by an air of mystery and marvel. By the early 1930’s, the carnival expanded: building entire houses full of the harmlessly macabre. The Haunted House full of ghosts and ghouls, the House of Love where Cupid’s bow might smack you over the head (but only if you needed it), and, perhaps most underappreciated of them all, the Fun House.

When there was so much fun to be had elsewhere on the carnival grounds, what good was the Fun House? It delighted and charmed boys and girls of every age, and every  _ age _ , to a certain point: then they inevitably moved on to more thrilling, chilling adventures.

By the time the carnival celebrated its hundredth birthday, the Fun House was known for something else entirely. For decades there had been rumors of a ghoul more befitting the Haunted House - rumors of a young man who wandered the hall of mirrors, silent and staring, visible just beyond the very corners of your eyes. The carnies, as they were called well into modern times, would never say exactly what was going on, or if something had happened to explain the strange sightings, or why toddlers as well as older children who had once been so mesmerized, came out of the Fun House shrieking with tears.

The man in the mirrors became a myth of his own, to rival that of Markus the Mimic, and for a time he drew a crowd of youngsters who fancied themselves brave of heart, and boasted of all the terrifying things they had seen within. The man was not merely a man all sad of eye but a terrifying monster, a whirlwind of anger and pain that could kill you dead with just a glance. If you were quiet enough, you could hear the sound of him coming for your heart, screeching like a thousand deaths.

That is - the boys telling their embellished stories claimed - if you weren’t strong enough, like they were.

Within a generation or two, the Fun House had been reduced to a joke, something teasing friends nudged you about on the way past the entrance - saying,  _ ooh, aren’t you scared to go in? _ \- laughing at the concept of ghosts and goblins. This was the 21st century already, the 2030’s, and the world, now ruled by science rather than superstition, would soon enter an entirely new decade of progress.

Of course, on one such occasion, it wasn’t just anyone who walked past the entrance with his teasing friends, but someone who had nothing but fond memories of the hall of mirrors. His name was Hank Anderson, and he was a lieutenant of Detroit Police.

It was Ben Collins, a detective from the same department, but also old friend and colleague, who gave him the most grief: possibly because they hadn’t been for years and years (decades, to be honest, but past a certain age it’s easier to talk in terms of years rather than decades. It mitigates one’s sense of mortality), and some of their best memories were of summer breaks spent running around the fairgrounds. Jeff Fowler, Captain of Central Station, was more skeptical, not because he believed in ghosts, but because he had never quite understood the charm of the place. This time, like always, he was here for the carnival foods, not for the spectacle.

Hank, on the other hand, looked at the grinning mouth of an entrance, and felt a strange tingling of fondness for the place. He told his friends he wasn’t afraid, that there was nothing to be afraid of - but if they wanted to be a pair of silly babies, then fine by him. He would go inside, just to prove them wrong. He wasn’t a young brat with a need to prove himself, but he couldn’t resist the challenge.

Once inside, he had a whale of a time, faffing about, making faces at himself in the mirrors, being an utter nuisance, all alone in the largely abandoned happy house, which was now in disrepair.

Unbeknownst to him, he wasn’t alone. In fact, from the moment he stepped into the long hallway, he had such eyes on him as to chill a man.

The man in the mirrors stared at him, blinking first, and then owl eyed, surprised and happy to see someone. It felt to him as if it had been a very long time since anyone had come to visit, and for a moment he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. 

He stared and stared again, his mind racing with questions:  _ a friend? Really? _

“Hello!” he called out, waving from the other side of the glass wall. “I'm in here! Hi! My name is Connor! How do you do?”

It was to no avail: the bearded man failed to notice him. So, therefore, he tried to speak up a little bit louder. “Hello? Where are you going? Sir?”

Once again, there was no response, and of a sudden Connor could feel a fire within him.

“SIR,” he bellowed, at the top of his lungs. “I AM SPEAKING TO YOU!!!”

Hank of course didn’t notice the young man in the corner of his eye, not at first, too busy making funny faces at himself, fondly remembering his childhood hijinks at amusement parks just like this one. Exactly like this one, come to think of it.

Thinking back, it all came back to him, how little boy Hank used to love chatting with the-man-in-the-mirrors that parents still told their kids about like some local Boogeyman legend, and how he had mourned the loss of his friend every summer when the park moved to the next city. He remembered now, that he came here for several years - until one summer, the house wasn't enough for his friends, it was kids' stuff, and Hank moved on with his friends, onward to other rides and the house of horrors. The man in the mirrors was just a game, or so he told himself over the years. An imaginary friend. Child’s play.

Little did he know that the man behind the glass looked forward to talking to him, that little boy, that he watched him grow up, and both understood when he didn't come back, and was ever so slightly saddened by the loss of a friend. The only friend he'd ever had, since...that thing happened, that he couldn't quite remember…

And then one day, this very day so many years later, a man walked in, with gray beard and scraggly hair, and bright blue eyes that looked at the mirrors with childlike wonder. Connor didn't recognize him, but was too distracted by the notion of finding a new friend, someone to talk to after so long.

He tried to catch the man's attention, but it was no use - no matter how much he tried to step into his line of vision, he might as well be invisible. No amount of greetings, no pleasantries - he was completely ignored.

It was then that Connor grew desperate. And then he got angry.

_ How dare he? How can anyone be so blind? _

"I AM TALKING TO YOU!" He roared, clenching his fists, and slammed them hard at the mirror glass.

On the other side, all Hank noticed was a tiny tremor of the glass - which he wrote off as coming from one of the rides sending tremors all the way in there.

Except, there it was again…

And again.

Suddenly there came a chill in the air that wasn't there before; a fine mist of breath falling from Hank's lips like white smoke. He looked over his shoulder, cursing under his breath...turned back to look at the mirrors again… And they bulged out like thin sheets of metal under the sheer force of someone's blows.

Not only that, but there he saw a dark figure, just out of sight, mirror images of the same man, stretching out at the corners of Hank's eyes. He was everywhere, and nowhere. Hank's heart raced in his chest.

‘Twas like thunder roaring up ahead, building, coming closer, and Hank found himself unable to move. Paralyzed, he told himself he was working himself up,  _ there's nothing there _ , it was only his imagination - unless they really did some epic work on the house since last he came here.

There was nothing there, until suddenly, there came a shift in the very fabric of reality. The dark figure crashed forward from the wrong side of the mirror, pale and twisted, gaping black holes where there should be eyes, and a mouth, and Hank's ears filled with the crushing sound of a hundred years of screaming into the void.

**SEE ME! HEAR ME! I AM HERE!**

Hank stumbled back, scrambling to his feet, clawing himself out and away, back into the crisp clean Summer air - back to his friends, who looked at him with startled surprise.

"It's true! It's there, there's something in there, I  _ SAW IT _ , oh GOD--!"

They wrote it off as Hank being as big a baby as them, but while they walked away, Jeffrey couldn't help but squint his eyes suspiciously at the 'fun' entrance, because he remembered the summers of their childhood, when everyone used to tease Hank about his imaginary friend in the Fun House.

Next night, Hank returned to the park, determined to prove himself wrong. He wasn’t crazy, nor superstitious. He just...saw something, and he needed to verify that it was all special effects. Hah hah, joke's on him!

Piece of cake. He's fine.

He went back in, floorboards creaking underfoot.

*

Time passed in strange ways when you were dead and forgotten - everything blurred, except the pain, until it became part of the status quo. It was only when someone rocked the boat that you could feel the shift.

Like when the same man walked in two nights in a row, but this time it was different.

This time his eyes were searching for something. He wasn't merely looking at himself in the mirror, but  _ beyond _ .

It was then that Connor realized he'd seen those eyes before, set in an earnest, chubby cheeked face hiding the strong bone structure he would grow into. Connor gasped.

Even more of a startle - the man's eyebrows twitched, as if in response - Connor couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so elated.

**H-...Hank? Was it Hank? Yes, yes! Hank? It's me! Connor! Your friend! Hello?**

Hank leaned closer, raised his hand, and tapped the mirror glass three times.

Connor tapped back but immediately, sending the big guy stumbling backwards. But he stayed. He didn’t run away, but he  _ stayed _ .

**Can't you see me?** he asked, stepping up close to the invisible wall between them, searching those blue eyes.  **I'm dying, here...**

The joke fell flat, but this time Connor couldn't feel angry. He was embarrassed. Not only of his poor attempt at levity, but if anything, he was ashamed of his own conduct the night before.  **I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell.**

*

Nothing happened. Everything was quiet, save for those knocks, and that was probably just one of the employees playing a prank on him. Hank ducked his head, and turned to leave.

The sudden chill in the air was like the dead of winter, and when he turned to look over his shoulder again he half expected to see that ghastly thing jumping out at him, but instead the glass was frosted, perfectly covered in a thin film of ice and snow crystals… And letters forming, like fingertips dragging through the frost.

DON'T LEAVE ME, it said, and continued expanding over the frosted glass.

PLEASE DON'T GO

I'M SO ALONE

Hank stared for a long time, cursing under his breath. “Holy shit... Holy shit!”

He couldn't be imagining this. He knew he wasn't insane. Someone had to be messing with him. “Now, look here, asshole, this shit ain't funny! You either show yourself or I'm coming back there!”

But of course there was nothing behind the mirror wall. Not a thing but a structure to hold them upright, dusty and covered in cobwebs. Hank checked, to be sure. When he came back, there was a new message waiting for him on the frosted glass.

I'M SORRY, HANK

I DIDN'T MEAN TO SCARE YOU

IT IS YOU, ISN'T IT?

Hank hissed, eyes wide open and his mind in a state of shock. “What the fff-...?”

Even if it wasn't so cold, Hank would be shivering. It couldn't be. It just couldn't.

Part of him still thought this was a hoax, a prank - but one very important question fell from his lips before he could stop himself.

“Who are you?” he asked. “Who...?”

The writing faded away. For what seemed like forever, nothing happened. Nothing moved in the room but the white wisps of warm air coming from Hank's shivering exhales.

Then: movement. One letter carved out of the frost, with painstaking precision.

"My name is Connor."

"Okay? Oh-kay... Uh."

Hank cleared his throat. It ached in the cold. He told himself that's it. That's all, just the cold getting to him, nothing more.

“...what-- are you? Exactly?”

The letters came quicker this time. What they spelled out, though... Hank wasn't sure  _ how  _ to process.

I AM ANYTHING YOU WANT ME TO BE

Hank blinked, still unsure what to think, or even say. Unfortunately, his mouth had an idea of its own.

“You should be careful what you tell strangers. People take advantage, you know?”

The words faded away again, but somehow it didn't scare him this time. Not when Connor’s response came so quickly, and with such guileless acceptance as to make a grown man shake his head.

GOT IT

*

The carnival was in town for two whole weeks; Hank made the most of his vacation time, and didn't even try bringing Jeff or Ben. Every time that he came to visit he was more and more convinced that Connor wouldn't show himself. That it was all some feverish dream in waking, a hallucination, a sure fire sign that he was finally losing it.

Maybe he was playing with fire, but he couldn't stay away.

Every time they talked the air seemed a bit less cold, and though Hank couldn't forget that first encounter that scared him half to death, there were no repeat incidents. Connor made him smile. He made him laugh, like a long lost friend. But all good things come to an end.

Connor told him the carnival was closing shop after the end of this season. It was to be disassembled, sold to the highest bidder - but who would buy an old, worn excuse for fun. Nostalgia had long since gone out of style.

Hank looked over his shoulder through a pocket mirror, through which he could better see Connor's face. He smiled.

“You mean to tell me we only have one more week to catch up?”

Connor nodded in the mirrored image. He was a young looking figure, gaunt and sad of eye, like the ghost stories spread about him. But Hank thought, more than anything, that he looked as though he’d stepped through a time capsule: timeless and beautiful.

Hank refused to question his sanity anymore. He knew this was real. Realer than anything else.

“I don't mean to sound...like a creep, but-- I don't want you to go. It's been this long, and it's going to end, just like that? Isn't there some way you could-- I'unno…”

BECOME A REAL BOY?

“Jackass.”

BUT I LOVE THE STORY OF PINOCCHIO.

Hank checked his own bias at the door, sure to remember that while Connor was witty and charming, he was in no way a cynical, bitter old man. “Yeah, fine. Sorry. But...could you?”

Connor shrugged in response, no more attempts at levity coming forth. Getting disembodied spirits...re-imb-- re-bodified...no. Getting Connor back into the physical realm wasn't exactly either of their fields of expertise.

The room grew colder again. The words I'M SORRY reappeared for the first time since their reunion.

*

No one knew what to do. The carnival workers knew of the ghost in the fun house, as they'd been told for generations - but why would anyone want to break the curse to set it free? Down that path lay nothing but madness. But Hank looked for answers wherever he could. He went to the library, the book stores, he looked online. He had one week. One more week.

He brought his notepads to the hall of mirrors, and together they worked through the theories that didn't seem to fit, or that outright contradicted each other. Neither one of them knew why it was so important that they never have to leave each other again. Neither one of them brought it up.

Ben warned him to leave that sort of thing the heck alone, saying that you don't mess with ghosts. Doesn't matter if you believe in 'em or not, you just don't mess around. Leave them in peace, he told him, “Just leave ‘em alone.”

But Connor wasn't at peace. Everytime they said farewell, it felt like dying again.

The days went by with startling clarity: they were running out of time. What was meant to be a leisurely vacation turned into a nightmare of trying to find answers that no one seemed to hold. Hank had suffered tragedy before in his life, and didn't cope well with the looming threat of another.

He grew angry, loud voiced, paced down the length of the wall of mirrors, waving his hands in the air, shaking with body language.

Connor stayed quiet for the most part, feeling terribly useless: bereft of any form of agency. What could he do, but listen?

Not much at all.

Hank's friends tried reasoning with him not to go back to the carnival, saying that he'd find nothing but misery there, nothing but regret. Ben worried he's losing his mind, but Jeffrey knew better: there's nothing quite like losing your very first, childhood friend.

The end loomed ever nearer.

The night before, Hank came to him drunk. There's nothing, he said. Not a thing he can do to help - except, maybe he could buy the entire building, or at least the mirrors, if that's what's keeping him here. He could try at the auction.

Connor didn't say no. He didn’t want to disappoint him.

*

Forever passed in the darkness of night, where Connor dreamed but never found sleep. He remembered the boy, of strong heart and unbreakable conviction, so happy to have found a special friend. The boy who didn't care that he was a specter of Death and Disease.

Such a brave little spirit, to look beyond the marks he wore for so long: the deep gashes, the gaping holes where the mirror fell and shattered over him; his blinded eyes, his mouth filled with mirror shards.

“That's so sad,” Hank had said, as a boy, “To be trapped inside the thing that killed you.”

Little by little, summertime by summertime, the boy had healed him with his bad jokes and his trilling laughter, and his wholehearted acceptance - until he felt himself again. No wounds, no pain. Just love, but from a distance. His first friend, and his first taste of unconditional love. 

The boy would inevitably grow up, and go away, and in the world of grownup boys, there were no place for ghosts. Not even if they were the loneliest ghost in the world.

The boy grew up, and even with the wrinkles, even with the dull ache of loss in his eyes he had the same heart, the same spirit of acceptance and compassion. Forty years or so, they had been apart, but two weeks was all it took for Connor to feel a different kind of love - that aches and festers even when they’re together. How close weren’t they, that they could touch; how far, but for the sheet of glass between them.

Connor stayed in his endless void, and waited until dawn. No fanfares sounded, no angelic chorus, no intervention Divine or otherwise - and all the while Connor knew what Hank did not: the Fun House was in such a state only the salvageable parts would be auctioned. The rest to be recycled, or sent to the dumps.

He couldn’t stay. He couldn't  _ not  _ stay, for how could he leave? He’d been lulled by the droning sound of the world passing him by for so long he'd slipped into apathy and despair - and now he would leave his prison, for what? An imaginary love for an imaginary friend? It would not stand.

Hank was not imaginary. He was the most tangible thing in this world. The mirror a tether and he a lifeline, worlds apart: this  _ could not stand _ \- to stay like this, forever trapped? No. A thousand times, no.

But how to break free? How to escape before it was too late? To live, or die trying. Ironic, that phrase. Living was all he ever did until that day. He should have stayed in his carriage, half buried under blankets and not wrestle with the displays when wracked with Grippe. The show must go on, the boss said. The boss was always right, even when he was not.

*

During the night Hank lay in restless sleep, dreaming of the child he was, come to the carnival. Images flashed before his mind's eye, of himself carrying a baseball bat; blond curls bouncing with each step, purposeful: if he could just break the glass, his friend would be set free.

He woke in the night in a panic, sweating and disoriented, and a bad feeling settling in the pit of his stomach like a stone sinking through water.

It's just a bad dream, he told himself. He knew he wouldn't have gone that far-- because his mother picked him up, marched him off?

He shook his head. Bed. Sleep, and sleep he did, for a little while.

When he stirred again, it's for his dog growling at the hallway from his side of the bed - a low, rumbling, deadly sound that the big St Bernard had never employed before. The sound set Hank's nerves on edge, like all the little hairs on his arms and chest.

The old record player in the living room…

He kept his parents' old records after they died, and sometimes liked to put one of them on to remember… But he couldn't remember ever hearing that song. Older than Miles Davis, older than the Glen Miller Band... Scratchy and eerie.

_ ~Goodnight sweetheart, all my prayers are for you~ _

_ ~Goodnight sweetheart, I’ll be watching o’er you~ _

_ ~Tears and parting may make us forlorn~ _

_ ~But with the dawn, a new day is-- _

_ ~is-- _

_ ~is born-- _

_ ~born-- _

_ ~born-- _

Hank creeps into the hallway, chilled to the bone and feverish at the same time, expecting to see a very familiar ghost standing in his living room. Sumo cowers bravely behind him, growling - but there's no one there.

Just the record player, with its empty turntable. Turning.

Desperation can do strange things to someone’s spirit. For Hank, it involved getting in the car with his baseball bat, Sumo stowed away safely in the back.

*

For Connor, it made him do something highly inadvisable. He raged, and raged, and raged against the dying of the light, howling in the first saffron rays of the renewed Aurora - and came up short. Or too tall, perhaps, and too wide, too deep, too much of everything between the earth and the skies to contain him any longer.

He writhed, and he screamed, and he threw himself against the walls of his prison.

Bouncing backwards and steaming ever forward, again, and again, and again. Fists banging, forehead cracking, nails breaking, limbs flying against the unforgiving wall.

He raged in every sense of the word, filled with it, filled to overflowing, until rage consumed him...and pain, and fear, and loneliness.

It is one thing to be left alone - another to be so lonely you ache. It stings, and wounds, it leaves you scarred, until that is all you know. Desperate, all consuming pain trapped in a shrinking space, and there’s no way out.

...until there is.

*

By the time Hank got to the carnival, he could see red and blue lights from several blocks away. Squad cars, police securing the area with holographic tape; people crying and screaming outside the perimeter, people being briskly walked away from the park.

He left Sumo in the car.

“What’s going on?” he asked P.O Miller, who looked at him with widened eyes.

“I don’t know, Lieutenant. The Fun House collapsed-- that’s why we’re here. Then we had reports of some crazy guy in a costume scaring everyone, and now--”

“Yes?”

“...it seems like it’s not a costume.”

The Fun House collapsed... The thought fills him with unnameable dread. “What do you mean, the entire house collapsed?”

And a  _ costume _ ?

Miller visibly twitched, eyes turning towards the fairground. That's when he first heard it. The shrieking. The howling.

He should bring the bat, but he didn't. He told Miller to look after Sumo, then headed onto the fairgrounds. Didn't matter that he was still on vacation, the officer let him past the tape.

The entire park was a mess of overturned corndog stalls and popcorn scattered like shrapnel. Cotton candy stuck to the soles of his shoes, and the buttery smells of amusement park treats that would otherwise make him smile, now filled him with nausea. There was a sickly smell in the air, like disease and decay mixed with all the sugar and fat.

It reminded him of death, of crime scenes where someone had been left for dead for far too long, dishes in the sink, fruit bowls untouched for weeks. Sweet, cloying, putrid.

He followed the smells and the noises, until he found what he was looking for. It's nothing like he imagined.

In an ideal world, he'd find Connor somehow restored to his own self: bright and carefree, given a second chance at life through some form of magic, but reality painted a starker picture. It was Connor, but pale as death, and gaunt: black holes for eyes and mouth, screaming bloody murder.

Hank approached, heart hammering in his chest; Connor hadn't noticed him yet. What to do, how to help? Neither one of them knew how to deal with matters of the soul having lost its way.

Seeing Connor like this, a whirlwind of pain, Hank feared the worst: maybe he didn't belong here, after all.

There was only one way to find out. Like Depeche Mode imprinted on him in his early teens back in the day, sometimes you just gotta reach out and touch faith. Even if it wore the face of death incarnate.

So he stepped into the fray, and the wind whipped around him, reeking of blood.

There’s lots of it. Everywhere he looked there were black spatters of the stuff, congealed and shiny at the same time, unlike any crime scene he’d ever been to - but Connor’s hurting, afraid.

It’s as if the nightmare’s stuck with him, despite the fun house being reduced to so much scrap metal and wood splinters. Freed from his shackles, yet trapped.

“Connor? Can you hear me?” He called out to him, shivering in the icy winds that tugged at his clothes and sent his hair flying in all directions.

Connor visibly twitched where he stood, half turned away. His neck made a crunching sound that in turn had Hank’s insides knotting up painfully - but it was the look on his face that hit Hank the hardest. It was like a Grecian mask of pain, distorted and stricken.

**“HANK! ** ** _hAAAnK--_ ** **”**

His voice boomed across the field, unnatural and broken. “ **IT DIDN’T WORK!!**

**“I’M SORRY! **

**“PLEASE FORGIVE ME-- **

**“I--! I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M ASKING!”**

It was like that first day at the carnival all over again, when Ben (the jackass) goaded him into going into the haunted hall of mirrors. He must've done something wrong somehow, and that’s why Connor threw himself against the glass with all the white hot fury of an avenging angel. Hank ran then, but he wasn't running now. He wasn’t about to go anywhere. Despite every last cell in his body telling him to run for his life, he stayed put.

Swallowing against a lump of terror in his throat, he told himself it would be okay. Everything would be alright.

“That was you, wasn’t it? With the record player?” he asked, edging forwards. “You promised we’d meet again. You called me sweetheart.”

**“NNNO!”**

That sound? Pure, unadulterated panic.

For one, gut wrenching moment, Hank feared Connor would summon every natural force in the universe and send it hurtling towards him - because that’s what it felt like: that electricity in the air before the storm of the century. The uneasy silence before an earthquake. The calm before the tsunami.

But rather than explode with raw energy, it was Connor himself that seemed to crumble with agony. Shrieking, out of this world.

**“dOn’T SPEAK! DON’T SAY IT OUT LOUD! THEY WON’T UnDErSTaND, THEY NEVER WILL, NEVER! NEVER!”**

Hank stepped closer, despite the crunching noises of bones not sitting entirely right as Connor moved, despite the godawful stench and the injuries. Despite common sense, perhaps, but he could remember those childhood summers, and his parents telling him again and again that you can’t judge a hound by its hairs. Or a book by its cover. And that’s what he didn’t do, when he first saw the man in the mirror, as a kid. And he turned out to be one of the sweetest things in the whole wide world. Kind, caring, patient - whether he's 5 years old, or 53, that hadn’t changed.

Maybe Hank hadn’t bargained for reuniting with a ghost some forty plus years down the road, and being...smitten...but at least he wasn’t a teenage girl going out with a sparkly octogenarian vampire masquerading as a brooding emo kid.

“Bullshit. This is 2038. Maybe we haven’t quite reached the finish line yet, but we’ve come a long way from...a hundred years ago? Right? I looked up that song. It’s over a hundred years old. The world isn’t like that anymore, you don’t have to be scared of love.”

Another step, and he kept talking, because it was habit as much as a ruse: to get closer while Connor was distracted. He didn't have the first idea what he’d  _ do _ when he got close enough, but he’d deal with that detail later. When he got far enough. Close. Enough.

“That song? It’s sweet. Sentimental.”

One step at a time.

Just a few more steps, before Connor twitched himself into a crumbling heap of bones and debris. Just another few steps...

**“I JUST WANTED TO SEE YOU AGAIN! THE HOUSE WOULD BE TORN DOWN, YOU’D never GET TO BUY IT AT AUCTION! I HAD TO DO SomETHING!”**

Hank grinned then, feeling as grim as the context called for, but if they couldn't see the cosmic stupidity that brought them to this point in time, then who would? “So you tore it down yourself? That’s proactive of you...”

And there they were, within arm's reach. Hank’s joke didn’t help, but it somehow didn’t make things worse. Connor bowed his head, vertebrae cracking like glass splinters beneath the heel of a boot. Hank stepped closer still, holding out his hands but not touching.

"Shh. I hear you. Hush now."

**“** ** _IIIIiiittt huuuuuurrrrts…_ ** **”**

Standing there before him, Hank knew one thing for certain: his five-year-old self would have been much better equipped to be here, unashamedly delighted by the sight of his macabre friend. It was hard to look beyond someone’s outward appearance, and see their true nature.

The wind whipped around them like a miniature tornado waiting to sweep them away to another realm. Connor wasn’t calming down, in no less pain than before. Despite this, or perhaps despite everything, Hank filled with sudden inspiration.

“I know, honey… But listen. Just hear me out, okay? Look at me, hm?”

This close the stench was unbearable, but Hank couldn’t see a monster. All he saw was a spirit broken by the weight of the world. Connor looked up, and though he didn’t have eyes, Hank had the distinct impression he could see him anyway.

“Remember what you said when we met again? I asked you what you were, and you said--”

Connor nodded, and his mouth moved over broken words, every syllable cutting a fresh wound. Thick blood oozed down his jaw like crude oil. “ **I’m anything you want me to be…** Every word looked painful.  **I don’t know what that means. I don’t know anything anymore… I’ve forgotten so many things, I--”**

“I want you to be free,” said Hank. “I want you to  _ live _ …” And leaning in, he took Connor’s broken hands into his own, glass shards and all.

“But most of all, I want you to be  _ you _ . Whatever that means to you, this ain’t it. Be you. Be free. Be alive.”

Connor shook like an apple tree come harvest time, staring up at Hank. The wind had begun to subside, but that didn’t mean they were out of harm’s way just yet.  **“But what does it ** ** _mean?_ ** **”** asked Connor, lost as he was to the passage of time. Of course he would struggle, coming back into the physical realm like this - a figment of a thousand wild, monstrous imaginations perpetrated across generations of carnival goers.

But Hank just smiled, and lifted his hands to cup his loved one’s tortured face. He had to be brave for Connor, even if the glass shards cut into the palms of his hands. “It means you’re more real to me than anyone I’ve ever met. It means I love you.”

They say love can move mountains, that it can restore one’s faith in humanity, that it can crush your spirit, it can build you up, lift you up after a hard fall.

They say so many things about love, but Hank knew just looking into Connor’s torn face, that there was something to be said about love being a force of nature. 

*

Connor’s tornado of emotion seemed to still around them; his twisted hands clawed at the front of Hank’s shirt, his cavernous eye sockets aimed at his chest, where his hands touched.  **“...’it means I love you’,”** he whispered, echoing Hank’s words back at him. Fingers clawing, clawing, scratching through the fabric to his skin: Hank stayed put. He was different from all the kids who boasted bravery, for he could see clearly. He could see what Connor could not. Perchance therein were the magic: perhaps love, like beauty, truly lay in the eye of the beholder.

Little by little, that idea sprouted within him like a seed, green and vibrant, spreading like a creeper. 

**“I love you,”** Connor whispered, and folded, folded, until his forehead came to rest at Hank’s collarbone.  **“I love you,”** he said, like a blessing, like a magic spell, raising his voice and shaking from within. Hank’s arms shifted, coming around his shoulders, one big hand enveloping the back of his neck. He felt safe.

“I’ll love you back to life for as long as I draw breath,” he rasped out, directly over where Connor used to have an ear.

And then, just like that, Connor found himself smiling and it didn’t hurt so much anymore. Hank’s hand was warm on his battered skin, and that warmth spread like sunshine. He’d been without sunshine for so long, and all of a sudden he felt as if the clouds were parting just for them. Warm, like a bright summer’s day.

“...there’s a word for us, you know,” he said in a murmur. His eyelashes tickled his cheeks.

“Star crossed lovers?” Hank suggested, and while he was wrong, the very notion turned Connor’s smile into a grin.

He lifted his head, feeling a blush to his cheeks; he blinked his eyes open, restored at least a ways. The storm was ended, that seed taking root in his heart. Hank looked at him as if he were a miracle.

“No. Madness!” He grinned, and Hank grinned back until he barked out laughter that skated the edge of tears.

For what seemed like forever, they held onto each other as if life itself depended on physical contact. All around them the traces of Connor’s externalized agony faded into the ground until all that was left were splinters of glass, and the dust thereof left in his wake.

So it came to pass, that love and love alone could lift the curse from Kamski’s Carnival - for love truly is a force of nature, that given the right circumstance, even star crossed lovers get their happy ending.

~Fin~


End file.
